Biblical Christian Ethics

By David Clyde Jones

After examining what Scripture teaches about the goal and motive of the Christian life, the author addresses moral dilemmas, human-life issues, sexuality, economic justice, and truthfulness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 1, 1994
• ISBN: 9781441206565

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© 1994 by David Clyde Jones

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-0656-5

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Preface

Abbreviations

1.    The Questions of Ethics

2.    The Goal of the Christian Life

The Glory of God

The Image of Christ

The Kingdom of God

Eternal Life

Practical Implications

3.    The Motive of the Christian Life

The Human Heart

Christian Freedom

Love of God

Love of Neighbor

Self-Love

4.    The Direction of the Christian Life

The Word of God

The Example of Christ

The Ministry of the Holy Spirit

The Role of Conscience

5.    The Primary Forms of Love

Justice

Mercy

Faithfulness

The Cardinal Personal Virtues

6.    The Universal Norms of Love

The Ten Commandments

The Law of Moses

The Ground of the Moral Law

The Use of the Moral Law

Varieties of Legalism

7.    The Resolution of Moral Conflicts

Consequentialism

Tragic Morality

Hierarchicalism

Prima Facie Duties

Case Analysis

Excursus on Truthfulness

8.    Marriage and the Family

The Structure of the Family

The Marriage Covenant

The Marriage Vocation

The Married Estate

Parental Responsibility

The Family and Public Policy

9.    Divorce and Remarriage

The Scope of the Problem

The Teaching of the Churches

The Marriage Covenant and Divorce

The Analogy of Faith

Summary of Biblical Principles

Appendix

Index of Subjects

Index of Scripture

Notes

Back Cover

Preface

My father, who grew up on a small red-clay farm in the South Carolina Piedmont before he turned to dry-goods for a living, used to love to tell the story about the county farm bureau agent who took a bunch of brochures on contour plowing, crop rotation, and the like to a farmer in his district, handed them to him, and said, Here, read these; they’ll improve your farming. The farmer took them, looked them over, handed them back, and said, Shucks, I ain’t farming now as good as I know how.

A book on Christian ethics is supposed to help us improve our living, but if the truth were confessed, we’re not living now as well as we know how. Our crucial lack is not information. Unless the Holy Spirit breathes life into our bones, we will remain on the valley floor, disjointed and very dry. Still, the Spirit works by and with the Word, and a fuller vision of what God is calling us to be and to do may be instrumental in motivating us to seek improvement in the Christian life. In that hope I offer my brochures, such as they are.

The title Biblical Christian Ethics is intended to underscore the unity of theology and ethics. Given the evangelical assumption that the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the Bible is the source and norm of Christian ethics as well as Christian doctrine. On this view ethics and dogmatics are not properly separate disciplines but integral parts of the whole study of God’s revelation of himself and his will for humankind.[1] Christian ethics is properly a subdivision of systematic theology; it could be called the doctrine of the Christian life.

When I first started teaching theological ethics some twenty years ago, the organizer of a conference on Christianity and politics asked me in casual conversation who had been the most formative influence on my ethics. Taken off guard I facetiously replied, Moses. The truth is I was embarrassed to admit I hadn’t read that widely in the field and furthermore couldn’t tell how I had been influenced by what I had read. Now I would say that I follow the Reformed tradition in ethics, especially Augustine on the goal of the Christian life, Calvin on its norms, and Jonathan Edwards on its motive. In addition, I have sought to listen carefully to evangelical Lutherans on the proper distinction between law and gospel, and I admit to an admiration for the structural analysis of Thomas Aquinas, though I make no claim to being more than a peeping Thomist, as the saying goes.

Confessionally I am committed to that remarkable committee report published in 1647 as The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines, Now by Authority of Parliament Sitting at Westminster, Concerning a Confession of Faith, known since as the Westminster Confession of Faith. According to its own principles it is not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both (31.4).[2] Citations from the Confession and its companion catechisms are made in that light.

Special thanks to the board of trustees of Covenant Theological Seminary for their generous sabbatical policy, which enabled me to write this book. Also to John W. Sanderson, Jr., my teacher, colleague, and friend (who got me into ethics in the first place when he was chairman of the systematics department at Covenant) for reading the first seven chapters on foundations and making numerous valuable suggestions. And to Sue Ellen Bilderback Jones, my intimate life companion and committed partner in ministry, who shares my hopes, calms my fears, encourages my writing, and—as an English teacher and more—generally improves my style. But though she tells me I can’t use a double modal, I still say I might could.

Abbreviations

1

The Questions of Ethics

What goals ought we to pursue in life? What sort of persons ought we to be? What practices ought we to follow? These are the great questions the discipline of ethics seeks to answer.

The questions imply that human conduct is subject to a threefold evaluation from a moral point of view. First, the end the agent seeks to realize must be good, intrinsically worthy of human pursuit. Second, the motive of the agent must also be good, so that the end is sought because it is worthwhile, the mark of a good character. Third, the means to the end must be good, conforming to the standard of what is right, since neither a good end nor a good motive is compatible with a bad means. For conduct to be morally praiseworthy it must be good in all three respects, not least because end, motive, and means are not finally separable.

Moral evaluation, of course, implies standards of judgment. Ends are judged good or evil by criteria of intrinsic value; agents are judged good or bad by criteria of moral virtue; actions (including mental acts or attitudes) are judged right or wrong by criteria of moral obligation. What are these criteria, and how do we know them? This is the most pressing question of ethics; no particular instance of ethical choice can be resolved without presupposing an answer to it. The answer is necessarily dependent upon some broader philosophical perspective, some view of human beings and their place in the universe.

From a biblical point of view, the question of criteria for goals, persons, and practices comes down to this: What is God calling us to be and to do? Since God’s salvific call is not a bare invitation but a manifestation of his sovereignty and power, the question is more fully: What is God summoning and enabling us, his redeemed people, to be and to do?[1]

Effectual calling has been helpfully defined by Anthony Hoekema as that sovereign action of God through his Holy Spirit whereby he enables the hearer of the gospel call to respond to his summons with repentance, faith, and obedience.[2] By including obedience within the definition, Hoekema draws our attention to the goal-directed aspect of effectual calling that often emerges in the New Testament. We are called to salvation by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and belief of the truth so that we may share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess. 2:13–14). The ultimate goal of our calling is eternal life (1 Tim. 6:12), the heavenly prize (Phil. 3:14), God’s kingdom and glory (1 Thess. 2:12). We are called to belong to Christ (Rom. 1:6), and since our calling brings us into fellowship with him (1 Cor. 1:9), we are called to live a holy life (1 Thess. 4:7) and to follow his example of suffering for righteousness’ sake (1 Pet. 2:21).

In effectual calling we are united to Christ and consequently called to a distinctive way of life in him, a way of life made possible by divine grace. The classic text is Romans 12:1–2, which in the unsurpassed cadence of the King James Version reads:

I beseech you therefore, brethren,[3] by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

The chief interest of this text for ethics lies in its climactic description of the will of God as the standard of the Christian life. But the truths about human nature presupposed in the terms of Paul’s appeal ought not to be overlooked.

By the mercies of God (the plural represents the Hebrew raḥamim, translated tender mercies in the Psalms) alerts us to the affectional aspect of human nature. Motivation in ethics must reach the dispositional complex of desire and feeling that Scripture calls the heart. The full extent of God’s mercy is revealed in the cross, as Paul earlier has said: God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). This is the profound truth by which we are moved to respond to God’s call. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).

To present your bodies brings into sharp focus the volitional aspect of human nature. Paul’s powerful appeal is addressed to free agents whose choices are morally significant. It assumes that human conduct involves acts of conscious determination toward good or evil. As Christ voluntarily laid down his life for sinners, so Christians, having been made alive by the Spirit of God, are called willingly and actively to offer themselves to God as perpetual oblations of thankfulness and praise. The best commentary on living sacrifices is Hebrews 13:15–16: Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

Which is your reasonable service highlights the ethical significance of human nature as rational. Both the New International Version and the New Revised Standard Version have spiritual worship instead of reasonable service, but the latter appears to be closer to the sense of the original. The word translated worship or service is latreia, which in the Septuagint and the New Testament always means divine service, predominantly with reference to the offices of the tabernacle and the temple. Under the new covenant believers are themselves said to be the temple where God dwells by his Spirit. Since in the context it is the whole of life that is to be consecrated to God, service would seem to be the more suitable translation than worship, especially in view of the broad use of the related verb latreuō (to serve) in both Testaments (e.g., Deut. 10:12; Luke 1:74–75; Acts 27:23; Heb. 9:14).

More importantly, the modifier translated spiritual or reasonable (NRSV has spiritual in the text and reasonable in the margin) is logikos. Although the word is rare in biblical Greek, the only other instance being 1 Peter 2:2, it was commonly used in contemporary philosophical discourse with reference to human nature as possessed of reason, intellectual. There is no cause to suppose that Paul’s use is fundamentally different; his usual term for spiritual is pneumatikos, yet here he says logikos, rational. This nuance suits the context well. Christian service is not a matter of unthinking activity or rote performance; it engages the mind as well as the heart and the will.

Human nature is affectional, volitional, and rational; it is also fallen. Thus Paul issues the twofold exhortation, Be not conformed . . . be transformed, so that, renewed by God’s grace, we may be able to approve the will of God, making God’s moral judgments our own and putting them into practice. The will of God is in apposition to the good, and acceptable, and perfect; each term bears a particular ethical significance.

The good. The prophet Amos long ago called for adherence to what in philosophical discussion is referred to as the first principle of practical reason: Seek good, not evil . . . hate evil, love good (Amos 5:14–15; cf. Rom. 12:9, which is practically identical, and Rom. 16:19, I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil). Good is the most comprehensive term for what human beings ought to be and to do. The biblical ethic is distinctive in that it identifies the good with the revealed will of God. In the great summary declaration of the prophet Micah: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Mic. 6:8). To this verse, with its threefold specification of what the Lord requires of his people, we will in due course return. For now we simply note its assertion of God’s revelation of the good that human beings ought to seek.

The acceptable. The will of God is further described as euarestos, acceptable or well-pleasing to God. This word-group (euaresteō, areskō, and derivatives) figures prominently in the New Testament vocabulary for moral conduct. The benediction of Hebrews 13:20–21 is typical: May the God of peace . . . equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. It is God’s approval that ultimately counts in ethics, doing what is right in his eyes, as the Old Testament puts it (e.g., Exod. 15:26; Deut. 12:28; 1 Kings 11:38). The standard to which we are called to conform is not impersonal law, but rather the personal will of our Creator and Redeemer.

The perfect. The will of God is finally described as perfect or complete. The true fulfillment of human nature consists in being conformed to the will of God, which is essentially God’s own moral perfection transcribed for creaturely imitation. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48). Self-denial in the Christian life is aimed not at eradication of the human personality but rather at eradication of sin. The goal of sanctification is the perfection of human nature created in the image of God.

To sum up, Christian ethics may be defined as the study of the way of life that conforms to the will of God—the way of life that is good, that pleases God and fulfills human nature.[4] This leads to practical questions: How do we know the will of God? How do we know what God is calling us to be and to do?

The will of God can refer either to God’s decree or to God’s purpose and direction. Where human response is called for, the latter sense is intended. God does not reveal what he has decreed as a guide for human decision-making; what he has revealed is his direction, his law (in Hebrew torah, divine instruction in the way of life) by which his purpose and desire for his people may be realized. The question is more precisely: How do we know the revealed will of God? The short answer is: By knowing the holy Scriptures, Which are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15). The Scriptures are both clear and sufficient for this purpose, so that we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (v. 16).

Even so, the answer is not as simple as it might seem. The will of God must be discerned through a whole-souled engagement of heart and mind and will. This is the perspective of Philippians 1:9–11, which may be rendered in English as follows:

And this [is what] I am praying: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and all insight for [the purpose of your being able] to approve the values that excel, that you may be pure and blameless unto the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness which is through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

This comprehensive prayer begins with the impelling motive of the Christian life (love) and ends with its controlling purpose (the glory of God). Paul prays for love’s increase in both knowledge (epignōsis), which denotes an intelligent understanding of the directing principles of the Christian life, and insight (aisthēsis), which is the existential grasp of their application in concrete circumstances.[5] Christians whose love abounds in this twofold way will be able to make true moral judgments and approve the values that excel (ta diapheronta), which is equivalent to knowing the will of God (cf. Rom. 2:18, "if you know his will and approve of what is superior [ta diapheronta] because you are instructed by the law").[6]

The biblical view of values is that they are objective and normative. It says, These things are valuable and therefore ought to be desired and sought. This stands in opposition to the subjective or descriptive view, which says, These things are desired and sought; therefore they are valuable, at least to those who seek them. As one author puts it, Human beings are value and whatever they value is value.[7] But some human beings value revenge, others cruelty, still others forms of sexual activity aptly labeled bondage. Such practices obviously do not represent intrinsic human goods; so far from being values, they are instead disvalues, destroying rather than fulfilling human nature.

Paul’s classic list of the values that excel, values that are objectively true and intrinsically worthy of human pursuit, is found in Philippians 4:8–9.

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praise worthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.

The double imperative (these things think . . . these things practice) brings out the unity of contemplation and action in the pursuit of moral excellence. Without going into a detailed analysis of each item in Paul’s list, we may note that there is an objective world of value grounded in the God of truth to which we are invited to attend with all our mind. We are not called to create our own values but rather to contemplate the values God has ordained. Contemplation through the renewal of the Holy Spirit leads to the desire to embody these values in our lives, so that the things communicated by apostolic teaching and example may be put into practice.

The apostolic witness points us to Christ, the definitive embodiment of moral excellence. And as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb. 13:8). Though we live in a changing world, God does not change, nor does his ideal purpose for human beings made in his image. Consequently the world of values does not change, however complex our world may become through advances in technology. We have in Christ and the holy Scriptures the permanent deposit of the directing principles of the Christian life, to be learned and applied in our own day through the illuminating and enabling work of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, by way of summary, Christian ethics is the study of the way of life that conforms to the will of God as revealed in Christ and the holy Scriptures and illuminated by the Holy Spirit. It seeks to answer the practical question, What is God calling us, his redeemed people, to be and to do? Expressed in term of goals, persons, and practices, a threefold answer may be proposed: The controlling purpose of the Christian life is the glory of God; the impelling motive of the Christian life is love for God; and the directing principle of the Christian life is the will of God as revealed in Christ and the holy Scriptures.[8] These basic propositions will be the subject of the next three chapters.

2

The Goal of the Christian Life

What is the chief end of man? Generations of children brought up on the Westminster Shorter Catechism have been taught to answer, Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. It’s a good answer. So good, perhaps, that few pause to ask why the Catechism begins with this particular question. Only the child who hasn’t yet memorized the answer is likely to stall by asking, What do you mean ‘chief end,’ and why do you want to know?" It’s a good question.

The Catechism presupposes that there is some supreme purpose for human beings, some ultimate goal or telos that fulfills human nature, some highest good of intrinsic value that is to be most sought after in life. It thus identifies with the goal-oriented or teleological tradition in Christian ethics encapsulated in the famous saying of Augustine: [T]hou hast made us for thyself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.[1] The Catechism begins the way it does because it understands that we are purposeful beings, that whatever else man may be—emotional, rationalizing, mortal, brutish, reasonable, whatever—he is very much a teleological animal.[2] It wants to know what we should aim at in life as a whole, for this will determine all our notions of virtue and duty and sustain our commitment to them. There is, of course, a history behind its remarkably comprehensive and concise answer.[3]

By the time Augustine was converted to Christianity the question of the highest good or summum bonum had long been the subject of philosophical discussion. Aristotle, for example, taught that the end or goal (telos) of human existence is eudaimonia, traditionally translated happiness but now commonly rendered flourishing in an attempt to express in one word Aristotle’s complex notion of being good and faring well. Not to be confused with hēdonē (pleasure), eudaimonia involves rational and virtuous activity, for these are distinctively human characteristics and therefore necessary to human fulfillment. Ask Aristotle, What is the chief end of man? and he would reply, To flourish through moral and intellectual excellence—plus a little bit o’ luck.[4] (The element of luck was necessary because Aristotle could not guarantee even the minimum physical conditions of life—food, health, shelter—let alone the income required for a contemplative lifestyle. Happiness is being good and faring well, but Aristotle had to admit that the twain do not always meet.)

In certain formal respects Augustine agrees with the classic teleological analysis of human conduct.[5] He acknowledges that the desire for happiness, understood as fulfillment-cum-satisfaction, is a human given. He further concedes that human activity is driven by the pursuit of happiness, even going so far as to say in one of his sermons, If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become Christians, every man will answer truly, ‘For the sake of happiness.’[6] The highest good, however, is not happiness but that which will leave us nothing further to seek in order to be happy, if only we make all our actions refer to it, and seek it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake.[7]

For Augustine, God is the highest good. The desire for happiness has been implanted by him and is intended to lead us to him so as to find in him our all in all. God is the absolute value, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and the good life consists in knowing and loving God. The pagan philosophers erred, not in seeking happiness (for God made us with this itch), but in trying to find happiness in themselves and in this life only. From Augustine’s point of view the virtues that made for pagan happiness (Aristotle’s intellectual and moral excellence, for instance) were vitiated by the pride of self-fulfillment—not the fulfillment of a self, which is the work of divine grace, but fulfillment by oneself, a strictly human achievement. No matter how resplendent the natural virtues may be, they fall short of the glory of God.

Christian happiness, on the other hand, transcends both the human self and the present life. As Augustine says in his climactic description of the celestial city, God is the happiness of the redeemed.

God himself, who is the Author of virtue, shall there be its reward; for, as there is nothing greater or better, he has promised himself. What else was meant by his word through the prophet, I will be your God, and ye shall be my people, than, I shall be their satisfaction, I shall be all that men honourably desire—life, and health, and nourishment, and plenty, and glory, and honour, and peace, and all good things? This, too, is the right interpretation of the apostle, That God may be all in all. He shall be the end of our desires who shall be seen without end, loved without cloy, praised without weariness.[8]

Thomas Aquinas embraced Augustine’s perspective on ethics and applied his architectonic genius to the development of a comprehensive teleological system.[9] In doing so he made full use of the threefold formal structure of Aristotle: "human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be, human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos, and the precepts of rational ethics as the means for the transition from one to the other.[10] This is regularly regarded by evangelical Protestants as having compromised Augustine, but Aquinas’ Christian frame of reference entails such fundamental changes that it is rather Aristotle who is compromised.[11] As Alasdair MacIntyre points out, the introduction of theism means that the precepts of ethics now have to be understood not only as teleological injunctions, but also as expressions of a divinely ordained law."[12] Again, the human problem of living rightly is not simply a matter of error, as Aristotle taught, but of sin; the solution, for Aquinas no less than Augustine, is God’s grace.

Calvin in his ethics retained the Augustinian orientation but made no use of the Thomistic system.[13] Like Augustine, Calvin took the question of happiness as the starting point for discussion of the knowledge of God, only with this difference: whereas Augustine had begun with the universal desire for happiness, Calvin emphasized the need to be existentially aware of unhappiness. The self-knowledge that leads to the knowledge of God is not so much the mighty gifts with which human nature is endowed as it is the "miserable ruin that results from the Adamic revolt. The first lesson in the pursuit of happiness is humility, a virtue tellingly absent in Aristotle and the classical tradition.[14] Calvin’s point is best made in his own words:

Each of us must, then, be so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God. Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and—what is more—depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone. To this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of God; and we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.[15]

In his brief chapter on eschatology in the Institutes, Calvin echoes Augustine’s (and for that matter Aquinas’s) description of God as the highest good and happiness of the redeemed:

If God contains the fullness of all good things in himself like an inexhaustible fountain, nothing beyond him is to be sought by those who strive after the highest good and all the elements of happiness. . . . If the Lord will share his glory, power, and righteousness with the elect—nay, will give